1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to flood control or water containment arrangements in the form of lightweight, small volume bags constructed of material enabling inflow of water and preventing outflow or providing a restricted outflow to enable the bags to be easily transported to the site of use and placed in position for flood water control or water containment purposes so that when water penetrates the bags, water absorbent and expandable material interiorly of the bags will expand to the full volume of the bag to provide a water containment barrier or wall.
2. Information Disclosure Statement
When flood conditions occur, containment barriers, walls, levees and the like are constructed from bags filled with sand. Conventionally, bags and sand are separately conveyed to a point adjacent the site of use after which the bags are filled with sand and placed in position or alternatively, bags already filled with sand are transported to a point adjacent the site of use and the filled sandbags are placed in position to form a barrier, wall, levee or the like. These procedures require adequate trucking facilities and are quite labor intensive inasmuch as the handling of the sandbags, filling of the sandbags and the like require many hours of laborious work. Efforts have been made to provide other types of containment barriers, walls and the like and the following U.S. patents relate to this field of endeavor:
U.S. Pat. No. 3,886,751, P. J. Labora, June 3, 1975
U.S. Pat. No. 4,362,433, Wagner et al, Dec. 7, 1982
U.S. Pat. No. 391,925, Mintz et al, July 5, 1983
U.S. Pat. No. 4,401,475, Eriksson et al, Aug. 30, 1983
U.S. Pat. No. 4,405,257, E. Nielsen, Sep. 20, 1983
Even with the above-mentioned efforts to more effectively contain flood waters and the like, the conventional procedure still being used is the deployment of sandbags by manually placing the sandbags to form a barrier or wall with the sandbags either being filled on site or transported in filled condition on trucks with the sandbags ultimately being manually lifted and placed in position to form the desired barrier or wall.